Review of Jim Kanaris, Ed., Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion: A Possible Future

This book participates in the re-envisioning going on today that seeks to expand the discipline of philosophy of religion, and it is welcome in that it focuses less on the problems of traditional philosophy of religion than on positive proposals for new directions. As an edited volume with eleven chapters, the book really offers a set of proposals and not a possible future for philosophy of religion. But there are tensions where the contributors are not on the same page, and recognizing them can help us see what I take to be the two main issues that philosophers of religion recognize today.

The first tension arises between two primary themes of the book that the future of philosophy of religion is best served by a larger dose of continental philosophy and that the discipline should be global. On the one hand, Morny Joy (Chap. 1) proposes Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics to foster an attitude of openness and awareness between ‘oneself and another.’ Maurice Boutin (Chap. 2)...